‘Team of last resort’: Ontario County's Underwater Search and Recovery Team

Sunday

Oct 13, 2013 at 3:00 PM

By Melody Burrimelody@messengerpostmedia.com

It’s not a job for the faint of heart.The work is messy, unglamorous, physically grueling, emotionally draining, often thankless, wildly unpredictable and routinely dangerous. It’s carried out in both the bitter cold and in scorching heat, and rarely earns much, if any, applause. But year after year, members of Ontario County’s all-volunteer Underwater Search and Recovery Team (USRT) keep coming back for more.By day they’re Ontario County Sheriff’s Department road officers and corrections officers — but when the call comes, the 14-member USRT leave uniforms behind to voluntarily take a bone-jarring, breath-stealing plunge into some of Ontario County’s most murky, seaweed-infested, algae-rich waters. Their goal: to search, hopefully rescue and ultimately recover lost people, property, evidence, contraband or objects that present a hazard.USRT members were front and center in September for a two-day search in Canandaigua Lake that eventually turned up the body of a 63-year-old Canandaigua man.USRT co-advisors Keith Green and Chris Drake share leadership of and a driving passion for their team. Green has been a hard-core deep water diver since college, and in 1998 brought more than 500 hours of shipwreck diving, deep water diving, and mixed gas diving experience to the table. Drake joined in 2006 and brings an arsenal of organization, budget and planning skills that keep the team up and running.In the last decade the USRT has grown ten-fold, Green said, assembling roughly $80,000 worth of equipment and a trailer for travel, storage and dive preparation. It operates on an annual budget of $24,000 within the sheriff’s office, with a big chunk of that going toward annual equipment maintenance.Each time a diver suits up, Green estimates the diver is wearing about $2,500 worth of gear.Ontario County Sheriff Philip Povero calls the USRT an “extremely important” part of the sheriff’s office. One reason, he said, is the sheer abundance of lakes, ponds and bodies of water within or adjoining the county that may, in an emergency, need to be accessed. The USRT provides coverage for Canandaigua, Seneca, Canadice and Honeoye lakes, as well as the Erie Canal and all the ponds and tributaries in the area.The team also works hand-in-hand with the county’s Marine and Recreational Vehicle Division (MRVD). An easy way to differentiate between the two is this: One group works above lake level and the other works below the surface of the water.For example, this past summer, the MRVD issued citations for tubing after dark and failure to have a personal floatation device. It also assisted stranded boaters, towed a disabled seaplane after a crash, and helped rescue passengers from a burning boat.In contrast, USRT volunteers conducted an underwater search this summer for a drowning victim in Canandaigua Lake, and helped clear underwater debris away from intakes at Canandaigua Water Treatment Plant. Last summer they recovered the submerged body of a swimmer who had been fatally injured after jumping off a bridge in Canandaigua’s Lagoon Park.“This summer was pretty quiet for us, until the drowning in September,” said Green, who added that the group did provide mutual aid to Livingston, Yates and Wayne counties.The teamMembers of the Underwater Search and Recovery Team are all certified divers, but their regular duties as sheriff’s deputies and corrections officers come first, Drake said. Members spend most of their time on road patrol or guarding the jail, and so far, they’re all men. The lack of female representation is simply because no women have applied, he said.And believe it or not, diving experience is not essential for potential USRT members. Drake said training will be provided for volunteers who want to learn.“You have to be able to swim, but you don’t have to have a diving history,” said Drake. “We can’t take somebody who’s afraid of water, but someone who’s willing to go through the training and has the expertise and wariness of the water and is able to swim — we can turn them into a diver.”All members of the team do both underwater work and assisting on the shore.“Everybody has to be able to do all the jobs, but some are better at some jobs than others,” Drake said. “And you never stop learning.”In fact, team training never really ends. In order to keep their skills sharp, members of the team train about once a month, Drake said, practicing in area lakes and ponds under a variety of conditions. This includes cold-water exercises and dives down to the depth of 100 feet.The diveIt’s difficult enough under normal circumstances to maneuver gracefully from the water into a boat or onto a pier. But add on a 60-pound tank and 100 pounds of diving equipment, and the going gets a lot tougher.Throw in extreme heat and dehydration, or extreme cold and a blinding underwater “ice cream headache” and it’s good reason to rethink the wisdom of public service.”Diving in ice cold water is not pleasant,” said Green. “Diving in the summertime when you’re trying to get into a wet suit and it’s 100 degrees out and you’re sweating and you’re dehydrated, when you’re on long boat rides, and you’re in zero-visibility water, just all that stuff — it’s incredibly taxing to keep a good frame of mind. It’s an incredible drain on you physically and emotionally and mentally.”But for the most part, USRT members never seem to waver.“These guys are volunteering to be here — they keep coming back,” said Green.“They don’t go above and beyond ‘once in a while,’” said Drake. “Every time they go, they go above and beyond, because that’s just the nature of it.”Rescue versus recoveryThe brutal reality that USRT members must face is that in emergency situations, they will rarely be called in “to save the day.” Their job will be to pick up the pieces.Green estimates it takes between 15 and 30 minutes for divers to get suited up after they arrive at the dive location. And that’s after they’ve driven in from all over the county.“Most of these things happen overnight, and we’re not called out then,” said Green. “We’re called out in the morning as a recovery. In practice we operate under a rescue-type operation, but our history is that we haven’t been able to be there quick enough. It’s the delay in the callout, the delay in getting people amassed, and the amount of time it takes to get people in the water. Usually by the time we get there, the fire department has responded, and if they have the equipment they are trying a water rescue.”You have an hour — if you recover the person — in which you could bring them back to life, Green said. Winter and cold water extend the possibility of rescue. But most of the time, the USRT is operating outside that window.When a report comes in of someone who has submerged, the first goal is always rescue, Povero said. If that’s not successful, the goal and need becomes recovery of the victim’s body.“The people who go into the water are voluntarily risking their lives to search for and hopefully recover a person,” Povero said. “But they’re also there to assist a family that is extremely distraught, and to ease the pain and anguish of a family that needs resolution about a loved one.”Drake said he and Green are actively trying to research how the USRT can take more of a “rescue” posture.“Unfortunately we are kind of the team of last resort,” said Drake. “When everything else has failed, we come in.”A word for witnessesIn emergency situations, it’s not just the fire departments and rescue teams that impact the outcome, Drake said. Strong eyewitness who keep their wits about them can actually give invaluable assistance to responders.“Whoever sees something should ‘call and stay,’” Drake said. “Call 911, then stay right there and make themselves well known so that we can get the information we need to hit the water and get the people out instead of searching for them.”Green said it’s extremely helpful if an eyewitness can find a landmark or two, as reference points, that will help pinpoint where a person submerged. Or get a passing boat to serve as a marker for where the person was last seen.Drake described what an eyewitness could do.“If they’re at the picnic table and they saw Suzy out in the water and Suzy went down, and on the far side of the lake there’s an orange cottage — they can show us that she was in line with that orange cottage,” Drake explained. “Then we already have that one leg. All we need to do is find somebody else who saw her and we may be right on top of her to pull her out.”People will typically want to rush to the person’s rescue, Green said.“We don’t discourage that, but they’ve got to kind of put all the factors in play,” he said. “If they’re not a strong swimmer, they shouldn’t try to swim out there. The best thing they could do is to be a good witness and allow us, when we have the proper equipment, to get out there. That would greatly increase our chances of performing a rescue.”The riskWorking underwater can be unpredictable in the best of conditions, let alone when divers are searching the wreckage of a damaged vehicle or boat, Drake said. That is why the frequent training sessions are so important. The team takes other non-negotiable safety steps as well.“Our divers are trained to our department standards,” said Green. “Most of them are only certified as recreational divers. Chris and I are the first ones to hold a somewhat professional certification through a public safety diving course. Our goal is to get all of our divers into that class to get them that certification.”USRT volunteers dive to a maximum depth of 100 feet — never more — with an average dive being about 35 feet. Canandaigua Lake, at its deepest point, is 276 feet deep.“We always make sure divers are ‘geared’ for the environment they’re in,” Green said, meaning they have the proper equipment for the situation and season. “And there’s always a second guy that goes over their gear to make sure they’re set,” he added.As a practice the USRT typically uses some sort of tether or line from the diver to the shore, so if something should happen, it would just be a matter of pulling that diver to shore.“We’ve never had a diver lost, but we have had a couple who might have had some exposure, or needed oxygen after a dive,” said Green. “We had another diver who had some microbubbles, or bends. Those risks are always there.”Povero said people in law enforcement often risk their lives on a daily basis — and it’s generally for strangers.“But these officers volunteer to put themselves at a higher level of risk in order to attempt to save victims who may be drowning, or to bring resolution to a family,” he said.‘... And other jobs as needed’Beyond recovery of people, USRT members frequently find and retrieve “articles and property that may be contraband or stolen, or evidence relative to criminal investigations, or hazards to navigation on the water,” Povero said.One of those recoveries was a safe.“We did find a safe up on the Erie Canal in Port Gibson,” said Green. “Someone stole it, cut open the safe, got what they wanted and wanted to dump the evidence — so they dropped it in the Erie Canal.”The team has been called for salvage operations, including a drilling barge that rolled over in front of Thendara several years ago, and an overturned car in the creek in Manchester.“One year we had a real wet spring and we had a lot of trees and debris in the lake, so we assisted with the boat patrol getting that stuff out,” said Green. “We’ve done cleanups at the pier and pulled out 55-gallon drums.”Why they do itWhatever the reason, from recovery of a drowning victim to assistance with cleanup, USRT members are ready and willing to take the plunge. Povero’s voice is softer when he talks about the quality and character of these public servants.“Nobody is forcing them to be on this team — they volunteer,” he said. “They undergo extra training, extra responsibilities, they can be called out on holidays, kids’ birthdays, at night, in temperatures of 20 degrees. They do it because they have a desire to go above and beyond what they would normally do on the job.”Green’s long-standing passion for diving won’t let him serve any other way.“I’ve had a love for it and just felt like I had a lot of experience,” Green said. “When you’re a police officer you always feel a duty to help and to go above and beyond. I had that special skill that I felt like I had to bring to the table.”For most USRT members, he said, this experience takes their basic passion for diving and carries it to the next level — because they do it as a team, and because it provides an incomparable service.“A few of our guys have mentioned that part of their drive is to help bring closure to families,” said Green. “There is a lot of finality with finding a body and bringing it back to the family.”For Drake, it’s a matter of finishing the job he was born to do.“I’ve been in public service my whole life,” said Drake. “I’ve been diving since 1996 when I got my first certification, and this just finishes the circle. You can’t run a case to the edge of the water and then let it go.”